She Walks in Beauty: A Woman's Journey Through Poems (18 page)

NIKKI GIOVANNI

We are not lovers

because of the love

we make

but the love

we have

We are not friends

because of the laughs

we spend

but the tears

we save

I don't want to be near you

for the thoughts we share

but the words we never have

to speak

I will never miss you

because of what we do

but what we are

together

ELIZABETH BISHOP
For Louise Crane

In your next letter I wish you'd say

where you are going and what you are doing;

how are the plays, and after the plays

what other pleasures you're pursuing:

taking cabs in the middle of the night,

driving as if to save your soul

where the road goes round and round the park

and the meter glares like a moral owl,

and the trees look so queer and green

standing alone in big black caves

and suddenly you're in a different place

where everything seems to happen in waves,

and most of the jokes you just can't catch,

like dirty words rubbed off a slate,

and the songs are loud but somehow dim

and it gets so terribly late,

and coming out of the brownstone house

to the gray sidewalk, the watered street,

one side of the buildings rises with the sun

like a glistening field of wheat.

—Wheat, not oats, dear. I'm afraid

if it's wheat it's none of your sowing,

nevertheless I'd like to know

what you are doing and where you are going.

BERNADETTE MAYER

I saw a great teapot

I wanted to get you this stupendous

100% cotton royal blue and black checked shirt,

There was a red and black striped one too

Then I saw these boots at a place called Chuckles

They laced up to about two inches above your ankles

All leather and in red, black or purple

It was hard to have no money today

I won't even speak about the possible flowers and kinds of lingerie

All linen and silk with not-yet-perfumed laces

Brilliant enough for any of the Graces

Full of luxury, grace notes, prosperousness and charm

But I can only praise you with this poem—

Its being is the same as the meaning of your name

ROY CROFT

I love you,

Not only for what you are,

But for what I am

When I am with you.

I love you,

Not only for what

You have made of yourself,

But for what

You are making of me.

I love you

For the part of me

That you bring out;

I love you

For putting your hand

Into my heaped-up heart

And passing over

All the foolish, weak things

That you can't help

Dimly seeing there,

And for drawing out

Into the light

All the beautiful belongings

That no one else had looked

Quite far enough to find.

I love you because you

Are helping me to make

Of the lumber of my life

Not a tavern

But a temple;

Out of the works

Of my every day

Not a reproach

But a song.

I love you

Because you have done

More than any creed

Could have done

To make me good,

And more than any fate

Could have done

To make me happy.

You have done it

Without a touch,

Without a word,

Without a sign.

You have done it

By being yourself.

Perhaps that is what

Being a friend means,

After all.

WILLIAM BLAKE

Thy friendship oft has made my heart to ache:

Do be my enemy—for friendship's sake.

WILLIAM BLAKE

I was angry with my friend:

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe:

I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I water'd it in fears,

Night and morning with my tears;

And I sunned it with smiles,

And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,

Till it bore an apple bright;

And my foe beheld it shine,

And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole

When the night had veil'd the pole:

In the morning glad I see

My foe outstretch'd beneath the tree.

LOUISE GLÜCK

My sister painted her nails fuchsia,

a color named after a fruit.

All the colors were named after foods:

coffee frost, tangerine sherbet.

We sat in the backyard, waiting for our lives to resume

the ascent summer interrupted:

triumphs, victories, for which school

was a kind of practice.

The teachers smiled down at us, pinning on the blue ribbons.

And in our heads, we smiled down at the teachers.

Our lives were stored in our heads.

They hadn't begun; we were both sure

we'd know when they did.

They certainly weren't this.

We sat in the backyard, watching our bodies change:

first bright pink, then tan.

I dribbled baby oil on my legs; my sister

rubbed polish remover on her left hand,

tried another color.

We read, we listened to the portable radio.

Obviously this wasn't life, this sitting around

in colored lawn chairs.

Nothing matched up to the dreams.

My sister kept trying to find a color she liked:

it was summer, they were all frosted.

Fuchsia, orange, mother-of-pearl.

She held her left hand in front of her eyes,

moved it from side to side.

Why was it always like this—

the colors so intense in the glass bottles,

so distinct, and on the hand

almost exactly alike,

a film of weak silver.

My sister shook the bottle. The orange

kept sinking to the bottom; maybe

that was the problem.

She shook it over and over, held it up to the light,

studied the words in the magazine.

The world was a detail, a small thing not yet

exactly right. Or like an afterthought, somehow

still crude or approximate.

What was real was the idea:

My sister added a coat, held her thumb

to the side of the bottle.

We kept thinking we would see

the gap narrow, though in fact it persisted.

The more stubbornly it persisted,

the more fiercely we believed.

LOUISE GLÜCK

Before we started camp, we went to the beach.

Long days, before the sun was dangerous.

My sister lay on her stomach, reading mysteries.

I sat in the sand, watching the water.

You could use the sand to cover

parts of your body that you didn't like.

I covered my feet, to make my legs longer;

the sand climbed over my ankles.

I looked down at my body, away from the water.

I was what the magazines told me to be:

coltish. I was a frozen colt.

My sister didn't bother with these adjustments.

When I told her to cover her feet, she tried a few times,

but she got bored; she didn't have enough willpower

to sustain a deception.

I watched the sea; I listened to the other families.

Babies everywhere: what went on in their heads?

I couldn't imagine myself as a baby;

I couldn't picture myself not thinking.

I couldn't imagine myself as an adult either.

They all had terrible bodies: lax, oily, completely

committed to being male and female.

The days were all the same.

When it rained, we stayed home.

When the sun shone, we went to the beach with my mother.

My sister lay on her stomach, reading her mysteries.

I sat with my legs arranged to resemble

what I saw in my head, what I believed was my true self.

Because it
was
true: when I didn't move I was perfect.

ELLEN DORÉ WATSON

First and last, mirrors

whose secrets we keep in a home-made petrie dish

(sometimes they give us ideas)

I mean the ones who say the unwelcome when it matters

whose kids watch us for clues

whose kids we watch for clues

Not the ones who decided there was too much too true

of them in our eyes, and ran,

but the ones who'll be around to see us bald or one-breasted

and we them

who'll know to say what can't be said (with their skin)

whose bodies, spreading or starved, we love

whose husbands (or lack of) it's okay to disapprove, or almost covet

whose girlfriends are ours by proxy

who share these assumptions and would their last

Godiva, valium, amulet

The lifers

who, even seven states away, are the porches

where we land

NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

I want her

To dig up

every plant

in her garden,

the pansies, the penta,

roses, rununculas,

thyme and the lilies,

the thing

nobody knows the name of,

unwind the morning glories

from the wire windows

of the fence,

take the blooming

and the almost-blooming

and the dormant,

especially the dormant,

and then

and then

plant them in her new yard

on the other side

of town

and see how

they breathe!

RITA DOVE

Velvet fruit, exquisite square

I hold up to sniff

between finger and thumb—

how you numb me

With your rich attentions!

If I don't eat you quickly,

you'll melt in my palm.

Pleasure seeker, if I let you

you'd liquefy everywhere.

Knotted smoke, dark punch

of earth and night and leaf,

for a taste of you

any woman would gladly

crumble to ruin.

Enough chatter: I am ready

to fall in love!

MICHÈLE ROBERTS
For Sian, after thirteen years

oh this man

what a meal he made of me

how he chewed and gobbled and sucked

in the end he spat me all out

you arrived on the dot, in the nick

of time, with your red curls flying

I was about to slip down the sink like grease

I nearly collapsed, I almost

wiped myself out like a stain

I called for you, and you came, you voyaged

fierce as a small archangel with swords and breasts

you declared the birth of a new life

in my kitchen there was an annunciation

and I was still, awed by your hair's glory

you commanded me to sing of my redemption

oh my friend, how

you were mother for me, and how

I could let myself lean on you

comfortable as an old cloth, familiar as enamel saucepans

I was a child again, pyjamaed

in winceyette, my hair plaited, and you

listened, you soothed me like cakes and milk

you listened to me for three days, and I poured

it out, I flowed all over you

like wine, like oil, you touched the place where it hurt

at night we slept together in my big bed

your shoulder eased me towards dreams

when we met, I tell you

it was a birthday party, a funeral

it was a holy communion

between women, a Visitation

it was two old she-goats butting

and nuzzling each other in the smelly fold

BARBARA RAS

The same moms that smear peanut butter on bread, sometimes tearing

the white center and patching it with a little spit,

the same moms who hold hair back from faces throwing up into bowls

and later sit with their kids at bedtime, never long enough at first,

and then inevitably overtime, grabbing on to a hand

as if they could win out against the pull on the other side,

the world's spin and winds and tides,

all of it in cahoots with sex to pull the kid into another orbit,

these moms will go out, maybe in pairs, sometimes in groups,

and leave their kids with dads and fast food, something greasy

they eat with their fingers, later miniature golf, maybe a movie,

a walk with the dog in the dog park,

where one night a kid sees an old mutt riding in a stroller,

invalid, on its back, its paws up, cute like that, half begging, half swoon,

and this kid, who once told her mom she knew what dads did on poker nights—

“They're guys, they'll just deal the cards and quarrel”—

starts to wonder what moms do out together, whether they talk about their kids,

their little rosebuds, their little night-lights,

or are they talking about their bodies and what they did with them

in Portugal, Hawaii, the coast of France, it's better than cards,

it's anatomy and geography, they're all over the map,

or maybe not talking but dancing—

to oldies? light rock? merengue? Would they dare dance

with
men
, with men in vests? in earmuffs? forget earmuffs!

top hats, younger men in sneakers who catch their eye from across the room.

Now they're singing. Where have they kept the words to so many songs,

storing them up like secrets, hidden candy, the words melting in their mouths,

chocolate, caramels, taffy,

the next thing you know they'll be drinking—or are they already

on to a third bottle, some unaffordable Nebbiolo

from the Piedmont, red wine named after the region's fog

and aging into a hint of truffles.

Soon two of them will walk off together, laughing,

their mouths open too wide, their shoulders, no their whole bodies

shaking, the way a bear would laugh after it ate you,

heartily, remorselessly, they laugh all the way to the bathroom,

where together in the mirrors they try to keep a straight face

so they can put on lipstick the crimson of the sun sinking into the bay.

They blot their red mouths on tissues they toss

over their shoulders, leaving the impressions of their lips behind

on the floor for a tired woman in a gray dress who'll lift them to the trash,

not noticing the moms' lips, not wondering for even a heartbeat

if the kisses there meant hello or good-bye.